


Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

by bmouse



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/M, Gen, Morally Ambiguous Character, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1613180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She misses her target. Rosemary in between the events of 2 and 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

She looks for him, after he goes.

That last fight was completely unscripted. Not the way some of the others were; stupid arguments designed to let Jack blow off some steam. It was her own needs where she had miscalculated, she was so used to leaving them out of the equation. So, a malfunction. An overlooked under-maintained system had given out and maybe that’s why she’d thrown the vase and the last she’d seen of her fiance was glittering shadow under a row of streetlights - pale hair and a worn blue sweatshirt sparkling with broken glass.

Whenever they weren't busy frantically reassuring the other that things were going to be “different” and “better” from now on and they found separate corners of the new apartment, like lab mice adjusting to a shared captivity, she could just about hear the sound of them both epically freaking out. Pathetic, on her part, that they seemed to be doing so in equal amounts. She had thrown away a ‘normal’ life because she found it distasteful, she’d walked into this. The people who owned her had forced him to kill. Again. What the hell did she have to top that?

What was 'honesty' to other people? An emotion commonly misinterpreted as co-dependent vulnerability, especially in romantic relationships - throwing yourself into the other person's stewardship, hoping to be fixed. Completely useless here. Confiding in Jack now would be like piling bricks onto a camel with shaking knees who barely needed the feather. An excuse to be cruel: “I'm only telling you this because I feel so close to you now.” Now carry me too.

Nobody wants true honesty and everyone says they do. As a professional liar she can certify that. The 'truths' gathering weight behind her lips would have cut his legs out from under him faster and cleaner than his father's swords.

What would she say? 

"Why the hell did it turn out like this?" 

"Why couldn't you just die?” 

“Some days I’m sure that is what I would have preferred: a neat wrap up so I could use this to boost myself into a senior position, keeping you fondly preserved - the secret memory of a grand love affair with my target where I almost, almost defected. Every spy should have a story like that, and it's like you were made to be mine.”

“I wish I was the girl you thought I was.”

She was her job - a programmable mission factor. She could creditably be accused of having less soul than the Metal Gears. A full-time actress, a blank canvas for others’ expectations, a woman the color of water.

Of course they were going to have issues once they'd both decided to stay and make a go of it. In a way she was just like every young woman forced into a shotgun wedding by an unintended pregnancy, only she'd been the one to sabotage the birth control in a mirror-flip of every abusive boyfriend story from Cosmo. Orders.

There were no orders now. Dispassionately she knows that is a large part of her freakout. When she'd started the assignment, the assignment was a sheepish, harmless-looking young guy sitting by the fountain in Washington square. She had been aptly accessorized in a light peach-colored dress and a straw sunhat, spilling her groceries for the meet-cute, daydreaming of running her own ops. 

Micromanagement from on high had been tedious and embarrassing back then. Especially given how easily she got him into bed after the first date. Once she got dangerously close to drunk-texting headquarters "Back off, Mom."

A secure laptop that used to sit in a safe deposit box is now kept semi-openly in the desk drawer. Though her specific access codes to SOP were cut almost immediately after the 30th she has rows of others tucked away in her head. Rose/Mary is strictly old-school, never writes anything down.

Except this. An unlabeled manila folder still has her old notes on Jack’s profile, stalled out on ‘few possessions, clinical living space, screams at night, unable to proceed without elevated threat of compromise.’ Half-smiling she twirls a red pen between her fingertips. ‘Subject is susceptible to fits of reckless heroism when at emotional extremes.’ There. That looks like a sensible addition. It’s like she’s still shadowing him, like he’ll reappear on the playing field. It’s like he’s still alive.

Higgs’ theory on the boson as applied to wandering nearly-husbands. She doesn’t know where he is but she knows what he’s doing. How it might end.

He’s gone to get Sunny. Saving the girl is saving his child-self. Apparently coaxed from the bottle Jack is still a wonderfully simple man.

In the end Campbell is the best leverage she's got left. Roy's easy. Guilt over his daughter-not-niece had worn a dependable groove in his character. An open door for more. As it was malfunctioning the AI had given away the secret of its' own construction. If Campbell hadn't been so overt in his opposition to the Patriots, maybe they wouldn't have stolen his identity for the Simulation. She suspected it had been Ocelot’s idea: it had his drama-queen flair all over.

Time to buy a new subdued flower-print dress, maybe some white kitten heels. A man Roy’s age would respond well to Fifties damsel iconography. Good thing she’s not showing yet, the size should be almost the same. Leave the old cardigan, it’s expensive but showing signs of wear. Then again, a sense of impending financial distress wouldn’t be out of place though it’s protection she really needs, not money; to be eclipsed into a major player’s camp so thoroughly nobody will bother to dissect what seems like the obvious motivation for a small-time ex-agent, desperate and not too bright.

 

After all, her crowning glory as an operative was second billing as the shrill girlfriend in a big production.

 

It works like a charm. Standing in his office with her chin up and her arm curled protectively, faux-unconsciously, over her middle. Taking in the de-facto widow of the man he’d inadvertently helped destroy is just such an attractive path to redemption. Roy even stops his daily contact with the bottle in his desk drawer. As she grows heavier his steps seem to get lighter. Comical, as if sins scrub off like a floor in a Swiffer commercial, but she doesn’t mind. It’s a change of pace being the balm for someone’s wounds instead of the one who makes them worse. Rosemary needs the practice. Mothers… should be kind, shouldn’t they? 

So she flutters around, making Roy eat healthier, sitting on USO committees. It’s a little boring but she keeps herself sharp in other ways. A large offshore account mysteriously disappears, parceled out to Veterans Affairs centers around the country. Anyway it’s a sin to complain: she gets light, secretarial work and the best prenatal care money can buy.

In hindsight she should have named the boy Jack. His father’s not using the name anymore. 

Four chairs from the door, in same dive bar where he used to go to pick fights she swirls mid-grade whiskey around an old glass, holding it the same way Jack used to hold it - with a cupped palm, like sheltering a candle. That’s in the file too, all the little things he used to do. Kind of amazing that a man with fifty shades of dissociative identity disorder managed to shelter little scraps of individuality in the way he moved, in the way he held something. A foolish fantasy is swirling around in her head that maybe he used to drink out of this very same glass.

Shuffling, the bartender moves down the line - fishing for refills.

“So what’s hurting you, hon?” 

She shrugs. His face is swimming a little - this is her first drink in ten months. Footage of the breakout had been hard to come by, the two and a half minutes she has, in little discreet 10-20 second intervals are grainy. Not grainy enough. She had seen the clean cuts in the Gekko, the little girl in the hospital scrubs, the thing that carried her out. 

The bartender can’t quite decide on his expression when she starts to giggle, hiccuping into her fist. There, honesty at last. What can she say? Maybe “My ex-fiance is dead” or “The only man I’ve ever loved looks better in heels than I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Trying my hand at an unpopular character. Her sweet housewife act just seemed so wrong to me, it's like everyone forgot she was a spy to begin with. Still shipping it though...


End file.
